Friday 31 May 2013

Friday Reading: Isaiah 44:13-20

Key Verse: Isaiah 44:19
19  And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it: and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?

Devotion:
One of the things that I have always struggled with is people making statues of anything and worshipping before them. Yes I know that there are people who make statues of our Lord and bow down before those statues not as a god but as a figure of remembrance of what Christ did for them; but I still struggle with that because that is the way I am.

What is being described here is something different. Men do some pretty strange things and they make figurines thinking that they can bow down before them and that the god behind them will be honoured somehow. How about looking at it this way… if someone told you that they loved you and they then showered their love on a picture of you instead of actually to you, what would you think of their love toward you? I would be a bit confused by what they are calling love!

The specific instance described here was to people who carved their own gods out of wood – and they used that same wood for fuel and for building other things. How can you worship something that is created by your own hands? Would you not have to start worshipping the furniture that you made or the wood that you have just put onto the fire? Does it sound condescending to say things like that? I mean no disrespect to anyone but ask instead what is seen in our own actions. We like to have things that we can see, touch, feel, hear, smell; any physical experience we can gain means something to us and we strain to keep to those physical experiences.

God wants a relationship with us that does not depend on physical experiences but rather on the spiritual. As long as we try to bring physical experiences into our relationship that is all we will get out of them. To enter a full relationship we should be willing to go past the physical and allow God to show us what His love really is about; it certainly is not about statues or any other created things. God is real, but He is not limited to the physical God that we would like to be able to see…

Points to Ponder:
What do you seek from God?

Are you limiting God to your own world?